The wind blows in their hair, the music swoons with possibilities, and three teenage girls frolic and look for meaning in their adolescent lives accompanied by some gorgeous low-lit cinematography. It looks and feels like a drama, perhaps a Sofia Coppola coming-of-age film about teenage isolation, loneliness, and where to fit in. But it’s actually the film, “Cusp,” the award-winning feature documentary from first-time feature-film directors Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt. Winners of the 2021 Emerging Filmmaker Special Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival, Hill and Bethencourt’s film was quickly snatched up by Showtime.

Continue reading ‘Cusp’ Trailer: Sundance Coming-Of-Age Doc Winner Chronicles A Sofia Coppola-Esque Look At Girlhood at The Playlist.

A sun-flared and bong-addled tumble into a teenage Texan summer rife with bombshells and boyfriend problems, “Cusp,” from debut directors Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt is one of those fractal-style documentaries, in which any given sliver contains all the colors and contours of the whole. The opening is a case in point: Long-haired girls lounge on a swing in the park, scoffing, wriggling, idly shooting the shit – it could be any year from any of the last five or six decades, except for the phones they glance at every now and then.

Continue reading ‘Cusp’: A Beautiful And Bruised Teenage Summer Fling [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

For the first time in recent memory, the Sundance Film Festival recruited just three members each for its competition juries. Even in the context of a virtual festival, that might have been a mistake after one film dominated the Dramatic category winning four awards. In very much a surprise, the crowd-pleasing “Coda” took the Grand Jury-Dramatic, Grand-Jury Audience, Directing (Siân Heder) and a special extra honor for its ensemble.

Continue reading ‘Coda’ Dominates 2021 Sundance Film Festival Awards at The Playlist.

Every year is a good year to stan female directors, but 2021 has cooked us up a real feast. Acting veterans like Rebecca Hall, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Robin Wright, and Halle Berry are finally claiming their director’s chairs on feature films, while arthouse icon Jane Campion is returning to hers after 12 years. Foreign language directors like Lucile Hadžihalilović and Ildikó Enyedi are making their English-language debuts, and French juggernaut Mélanie Laurent is working on two releases back to back.

Continue reading 52 Films Directed By Women To Watch In 2021 at The Playlist.